


i wanna go down south and hold onto your feelings lately

by johniaurens



Series: call me an addict to your elastic moods [5]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Background Relationships, Domestic Fluff, Drama & Romance, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Non-Linear Narrative, Slice of Life, Trans Character, i'm tired of sadness so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7925500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johniaurens/pseuds/johniaurens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from honey by swim deep. i fucken love this song wtf</p><p> i wanted to kind of solve gil's insecurities wrt his and john's relationship so. heres this? theres a little more focus on their relationship in this i think shrugs. also here enjoy alex my selectively nonverbal son</p><p>pls read the previous installments to this series first or this probs wont make much sense</p><p>gifted 2 my bf theo whom i lov n kreeta my sin friend bc why not</p>
    </blockquote>





	i wanna go down south and hold onto your feelings lately

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cirkne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirkne/gifts), [doriantrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doriantrash/gifts).



> title from honey by swim deep. i fucken love this song wtf
> 
> i wanted to kind of solve gil's insecurities wrt his and john's relationship so. heres this? theres a little more focus on their relationship in this i think shrugs. also here enjoy alex my selectively nonverbal son
> 
> pls read the previous installments to this series first or this probs wont make much sense
> 
> gifted 2 my bf theo whom i lov n kreeta my sin friend bc why not

"There's a fair," says John when he comes home from work, snow in his hair and on his coat. It’s already dark outside. John’s been working too many double shifts lately, coming home tired and later than usual, and it’s affecting the dynamic of the whole relationship. With John gone so much Alex is working more. Or at least he’s sitting in front of his laptop more, typing more, drinking more coffee. Doing more. Gil is slinking around the apartment, trying to find something to do, anything. Alex doesn’t talk _to_ him when he’s working, talks to himself, talks at his text, but can’t hold a conversation. He’s moved into the kitchen, at least, though Gil suspects that it’s more because that way he’s closer to the coffee machine than it is because he cares about whether Gil sees him at all that day. 

(Gil is trying to be better about that. He’s trying not to think self-deprecating thoughts, but sometimes it gets hard. It’s not like Alex is alone, like Gil isn’t there, and seeing Alex act like he doesn’t exist does hurt. It’s just a fact.)

"Okay," says Gil from the couch.  
  
"Um," says Alex from the kitchen table, in a tone that means that there's something he thinks that John is forgetting but doesn't feel like telling him what it is because he thinks that he should know. He's working, has been typing for hours, and Gil's been absently flicking through TV channels, looking for something to watch and failing spectacularly. There's nothing on TV, which makes sense, he guesses, considering that it's a Tuesday evening.

"It'll be in town from tomorrow until the end of the week. We should go," continues John like he didn't notice Alex's response at all.   
  
"Sure," says Gil, because he likes fairs, "when?"   
  
John shrugs. "I don't know? I'm working tomorrow but we could do any other day."

"Um," says Alex again, this time a little louder.   
  
“What?” asks John, voice tired. Gil wants to snicker but he doesn’t. He’s very good at keeping his reactions in check.   
  
“I can’t go,” says Alex.   
  
“Oh,” says John, voice all bland, “shocker.” 

Alex makes a noise like an angry horse. “What’s that supposed to mean?”   
  
Gil turns the volume up, is suddenly extremely interested in the real estate show that’s still playing on the TV.   
  
“You’re always working,” says John over the dialogue, and Gil winces, because he hadn’t realized that John had noticed.   
  
“Sorry for trying to pay my share of the rent and the food?” says Alex, and even though he says sorry it’s blatantly obvious that that’s the opposite of what he’s feeling.   
  
“You never want to leave the house,” complains John, and Alex makes another horse noise.   
  
“I’m autistic,” says Alex, and doesn’t elaborate.   
  
"I'm borderline," says John, and doesn't elaborate either.   
  
Gil can practically hear Alex squinting at John, and after a few minutes of tense silence Alex sighs and says, "sorry. I meant that I never want to leave the house because I'm autistic. Because it takes so much energy. You feel."   
  
John doesn't feel, but he sighs too and Gil hears his posture round out and relax. "I'm sorry," apologizes John, "I knew this. I'm sorry."

Their fights are always like this - weirdly tense, fight for the sake of a fight, and then suddenly they're both deflating and apologetic and Gil doesn't quite get it, but he's glad that they never stretch out too long, not these fights. There’s times when they’ll slam the doors and cry but that usually has real reasons. 

"Cuddles?" calls Gil from the couch because he's been craving physical contact all day. There's a moment of silence, and then John is murmuring into Alex's ear, and Alex sighs, but he gets up from his seat, and they appear into the living room. Gil holds out his arms and Alex falls into them, John curling himself around them both.

"Fair?" asks Gil after a few minutes.   
  
"No," Alex and John answer simultaneously. Gil closes his eyes and smiles.

-

“Are you guys sure you want to be in a relationship with me?” asks Gil.

They’re in the store, on aisle eight, bread, and Alex stops talking mid-sentence. An awkward silence falls.

“Um,” says John, “if you’re trying to break up with us this is a really bad place.”

Gil folds the shopping list very neatly, puts it in his pocket. “No,” he says, “I’m not. I just. I know you two have been together for years and I’ve only been here for less than a year, I know our relationships aren’t the same - it’s just that. Sometimes it feels like you don’t want me there? Or like you don’t think I’m a part of the relationship unless we’re all there?”

John pauses where he was digging for their brand of toast. “Hm,” he says. Stops to think. “Do we?”

Gil nods. He’s been thinking about this for a while now and he’s. He’s tired. He watches as Alex fidgets where he’s standing, feels bad.   
  
“It’s - it’s fine,” he starts, and then John is talking again, says “no, no, Gil, it’s not fine. Fuck. Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry. Christ. Look - we need to get out of this store but when we get home we should talk.”   
  
Gil makes a face and John goes all stern, says “stop that, we don’t want to break up with you, gosh. How could we ever,” and there’s that _we_ again, John and Alex being one entity, but Gil just smiles this time, and Alex smiles weakly back.

“What’s next on the list?” asks Gil after John’s fished the bread from the back of the shelf.   
  
“Monster,” says Alex with a faraway look in his eyes.

-

“So,” says Alex one morning at the breakfast table, because that’s a thing they do now, have breakfast together.

Gil is still getting used to it - he and Adrienne did that, sure, but Adrienne didn’t work and Gil’s hours were so flexible he got to leave his house at 10 am every day, didn’t always even have to go if he didn’t feel like it. He has his job, technically, but he only works when he’s particularly bored, and never leaves the house before eleven. John leaves at six thirty sharp most mornings which leaves both Gil and Alex bleary-eyed and shivery at the breakfast table, still wrapped in their blankets, curled up together or sitting a few inches apart, basking in each other’s body warmth. John doesn’t mind getting up early, and Alex doesn’t either - for Alex it’s more the physical reality of getting up early and less the idea; he likes being up early but his body really doesn’t. Gil knows that for years Alex would wake up at seven every morning, but he’d let that slip a little along the years with John, and clearly waking up at 5.45 am is not the same as waking up at seven. Usually he and Gil just go back to sleep after John leaves, pile up together on the bed and try to ignore how big the bed feels without John. Then they get up a few hours later to have real breakfast, one with eggs and bacon and toast and coffee instead of John's pancakes and apple juice.

Not that there's anything wrong with John's breakfast. He makes amazing pancakes and if Gil and Alex look miserable enough he'll coo at them and fuss like a concerned mother bird. Alex especially only needs to bat his eyelashes at John and look a little sad and John will take one look at his wide, wet eyes and nestle right into his arms until he’s late for work. It's cute. It's very domestic. It makes Gil happier than it should.

“So,” says Alex. He taps on his glass, an absent-minded thing, a dull sound of fingertip against glass. John makes a curious noise from his place at the table, and Gil mh-ms into Alex’s hair. “If we got a bigger apartment I think the rent would even out because there’s three of us to pay it.”

Gil freezes. They haven’t talked about this since -- since months ago, when he'd brought it up and Alex had freaked out on them both for it.

"That's funny," starts Gil, because it is, because that's exactly what he suggested when he brought it up, exactly how he reasoned his idea, and now here Alex, the bony lump in his arms, is saying it like he came up with the idea, like no one else could possibly have thought about it.

John shoots him a look from where he's sitting on the other side of the table. A secret look, a beautiful look. A _shut the fuck up, Gilbert_ look.   
  
Gil shuts his mouth and pets Alex's face with both hands, says, "yeah, baby, that makes sense. That makes sense. You want to look for apartments?"

And Alex, quietly, into the strip of Gil’s skin visible above his shirt collar, “what if we looked for a house instead?”

-

March comes. Alex realizes that he hasn’t changed his pronouns even once in three entire months and has a breakdown.

“Maybe I’m just faking it,” he says, suddenly horrified, and then he’s scratching himself, which hasn’t happened in a while, so Gil knows that it’s bad.

“No,” says Gil, but Alex doesn’t answer him, just sits down on the floor and looks anxious.

John comes to sit next to him and asks, firm but worried, “is touch okay?” and then when Alex nods, “can I hug you?” and Alex signs _yes yes yes,_ and John wraps his hands around Alex, puts his absurdly large hands on Alex’s waist and in his hair and Gil sort of hovers over the both of them, feeling awkward with how tall he is and how little he can help from where he is looming over his boyfriends, even when he kneels down to get closer. John’s grip is loose, but Alex is moving into his body, and he looks like a frightened bunny like this, chasing the contact, and John leans forward into him even though Alex is shaking, jostling John's body. 

Alex’s hands still eventually, and he lets out a ragged breath that means that he’s done and just needs to rest for a little bit. He slumps against John’s chest and John kisses the top of his head, pushes him down onto the floor so he can put his head on his lap and pet his hair. Alex makes happy cat noises and starts humming. 

“I’m sorry,” says Gil, and Alex looks at him from the floor, eyes still cry-red and confused.   
  
“Why?” asks John, and Gil feels very small, suddenly.   
  
“For not doing enough?” he guesses, and Alex makes a weird sound between a wheeze and a whimper and John pulls him into a hug over Alex’s head, says “dude, you _gotta_ stop being so hard on yourself, you _are_ doing enough, you’re good,” and that too feels wrong, because it’s Alex’s breakdown and they’re supposed to be comforting Alex, not Gil, but he lets John hug him into his side regardless. 

John makes Alex read about a hundred articles and blog posts about how pronouns don’t equal gender. Alex buries they, them pronouns. The topic is laid to rest, at least for the moment.

-

House. They’re looking at a real house.

Well - they’re inside of the house currently. It’s small, far from the city, but it’s very reasonably priced considering its location and age, Gil will give it that. John and Gil look through the records, check the structures, knock on the walls, check for water damage, while Alex runs around and makes delighted noises. It has three bedrooms which is two more than what they have in their current apartment, but the layout is kind of weird, and Gil grumbles at the fact that the floors, old and worn, still have no heating.

Gil looks through the papers while watching Alex fall in love with the house immediately.   
  
“He did that with the current apartment too,” says John when Alex is far away enough not to hear them, “fell in love with it so visibly that I just couldn’t tell him that there were so many things wrong with it I couldn’t have counted them with my fingers.” Gil snorts, and puts one arm around John’s shoulders, pulls him in closer.   
  
“We’re buying this house, aren’t we?” asks Gil, already resigned to his fate. 

“Holy shit,” comes from the kitchen, “there’s a garden?” 

John looks into the distance for a long while, but there’s a smile on his face. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, we are.”

-

The first day in their new house Gil pins Alex against the wall and kisses him until he's gasping. Alex goes with it, loose-limbed and languid, delight evident in his eyes. John is watching, eyes sharp, and Gil breaks the kiss, makes eye contact with John.

John nods, as if to say “go on,” as if to say “okay, okay,” and Gil kisses Alex and goes “baby?” and Alex goes _mmm_ and goes a little more boneless still, and Gil kisses him again just because he looks pretty and Gil loves him.

“How about we christen the house?” asks John, and Gil sighs into Alex’s mouth and Alex giggles.

“We are _trying_ ,” says Gil and John grins.

They stumble into the bedroom, John slotted against Gil’s back, and then there’s Alex, sweet, beautiful, bright Alex, on his hands and knees with John between his legs, and Gil’s kissing him and Alex is making happy noises into his mouth. Gil twists Alex’s body until he can straddle his face, and Alex gives him thumbs up and smiles, wide, and Gil sits down. John slides into Alex, and Alex makes muffled cat sounds into Gil, squirms like he can’t decide what to do with himself. 

Afterwards, John lies down between them and touches them, very gently, traces the outlines of their ribs and their collarbones, and Gil sighs, and Alex makes a happy sound. 

“I love you,” says Gil to no one in particular, to both of them.

-

Alex takes up gardening. He’s missed apple trees, missed looking out of the window and seeing green. Hercules and Eliza both come over, and Eliza brings her wife, and they have a good day out in the garden, Hercules bringing an apple tree with him and Eliza and Maria armed with elbow-length gardening gloves. They don't get a lot done - they root the apple tree, and Eliza and Maria tag team the weeds growing where Alex wants to grow tomatoes, but mostly they just tackle each other a lot and joke around. Maria and Eliza got married almost three years ago and the rest of them coo over their engagement story despite having been at the wedding and having heard the story itself several times before. It's still cute. Gil thinks he catches John wiping his eyes.

Alex laughs louder than he has for a while, and by the time they pile up in the living room and put on a movie he's completely sucked dry and exhausted. Hercules offers him pizza but he claims that he's too tired to eat. Gil pulls him into his arms and John comes over as well, curls up around them so that Alex is completely surrounded by them, warm and happy.   
  
"You okay?" asks Gil about halfway through the movie when Alex's eyelids start drooping, and he signs "tired". His hands don't quite obey him and it's sloppy, looks weird, one hand just sliding down his chest like he forgot how hands work, and Gil kisses his forehead, says "I know. You want to go to sleep?" and John perks up at that, watches as Alex nods.   
  
"You wanna carry him or should I?" asks John.   
  
"I can do it," says Gil, and then he picks Alex up.   
  
Eliza and Maria, cuddled up on the couch, coo at them. John blows Alex a kiss and Alex smiles, curls into Gil's chest.

"Hey," says Gil after Alex has been put into bed, "I love you."   
  
Alex hums, and Gil knows what he means. That he means "love you too."

-

Gil wakes up in the middle of the night.

This isn’t -- it’s not new, necessarily, or weird, he wakes up sometimes because Alex has a habit of punching the people he sleeps next to in the face when he moves in his sleep, and because John talks in his sleep quite loudly, but this time it’s different. The only sound Gil can hear is the hum of the AC and Alex’s steady breathing against his left cheek, and his nose doesn’t hurt, so it can’t be that.

"Gil," comes a voice from the darkness, then. Gil squints, because the room is dark, and he can't see. The squinting doesn’t help, of course, but nevertheless he does it. 

It's John. He knows this because Alex is sleeping next to him, still, seemingly unbothered by John's absence.   
  
"Gil," John repeats. He's moving closer. "Are you awake?"

Gil grunts. Not really an answer but who cares.   
  
"Oh, good," says John, "you gotta get up."   
  
Gil doesn't want to get up - he's extremely comfortable buried underneath Alex's warm body and the blankets and he knows that if he gets up he'll freeze to death. He misses the heated floors of his apartment, sometimes.

John's hands come out of nowhere to cradle his face, to cup his jaw.   
  
"Get up," he says again, gentler.   
  
"No," says Gil.   
  
"You'll regret it if you don't, come on," and Gil groans but he untangles himself from Alex and gets up. John wraps his arm around Gil's body, and it's weird because he seems to be going for his shoulders but he severely misjudges their location and ends up wrapping an arm around Gil's chest. For a while Gil thinks that John has mistaken him from Alex again, but then John fixes the position of his arm, and his hand settles on his waist. It's nice. Comforting. Warm.

John nestles into his side, warm and soft, and leads him to the kitchen. It's already bathed in the warm pink of early morning light, and the clock on the microwave reads 4 am. It's getting light again. Summer is approaching. The kitchen is beautiful in this light, this light where you can't see the yellowing counters and the scratches on the wooden table. Gil goes to turn on the lights, but John grabs his hand before he can touch the light switch.   
  
"Wha-" starts Gil but John goes "shhh", sharp, and then, softer, "you'll scare them."   
  
"Scare who?" asks Gil, and instead of answering John just points his finger towards the window.

And outside, in the garden, there's a moose.   
  
"Oh," says Gil, because there's a moose in their garden.   
  
John hums, and then he says "look, here comes the other one," and Gil's breath catches.   
  
"It's a baby," he says, and John turns to hide his smile into Gil's shoulder.   
  
"Yeah," he says, and they watch in silence as the calf approaches its mother, its willowy legs still a little shaky.   
  
"They're going to eat our apple tree," says Gil, completely mesmerized.   
  
"Yeah," answers John in the same tone, "imagine Alex's reaction to this."   
  
Gil giggles, because Alex would lose his shit, and then John laughs too, and somehow they end up with John with his back against the fridge door, still laughing. Gil crowds him into it until their chests are pressed together and John is on his tiptoes, smiling. 

Gil takes him by the wrists, pins them against his chest, and John looks him in the eye, a quick glance, a secret look, and goes boneless against Gil.   
  
"Baby?" asks Gil.   
  
"Kiss me," breathes John, eyes fluttering closed. 

And Gil does.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on tumblr @laflams or on twitter @softlams thnaks


End file.
